•The Asian tsunami: why there were no warnings (Think Write)
•By Peter Symonds--------Author Title
3 January 2005--------Date
•As the horrifying toll of death and destruction continues to mount in southern Asia, it becomes ever more obvious
that lives could have been saved if a tsunami warning system had been in place. With just 15 to 30 minutes
notice, and clear directives to flee, many people who had no idea what was happening, or how to react, could
have escaped to safety.
•The tsunami and the earthquake that triggered it are natural phenomena. While earthquakes cannot be forecast
they can be quickly pinpointed. Moreover, if the appropriate scientific equipment is in place, the formation of a
tsunami can also be detected and its likely path predicted and even tracked.
•A tsunami warning system has existed in the Pacific Ocean since the late 1940s. It was substantially upgraded
after a tidal wave, triggered by a massive earthquake, killed more than 100 people in Alaska in 1964. In addition
to seismological instruments that register tremors, a network of sea level gauges and deep-sea sensors or
“tsunameters” linked by satellite to round-the-clock monitoring stations is based in Hawaii, Alaska and Japan.
Using computer modelling, scientists can predict the likely propagation of tsunamis and their probable impact.
•There is no such system in the Indian Ocean. Of the 11 countries affected by last week’s calamity, only Thailand
and Indonesia belong to the Pacific Ocean tsunami warning system. Most of the nations have seismological units
that detected the earthquake. Not all quakes, however, generate tsunamis. In the absence of planning,
preparation and additional equipment, it is difficult to make accurate predictions. And time is of the essence, since
tsunami waves travel at speeds of up to 800kmh, depending on the depth of the water.
•The December 26 earthquake registered 9 on the Richter scale, making it the largest since the Alaskan quake
and one of the most massive in the last century. The epicentre of the initial tremor was off the northwest coast of
the Indonesian island of Sumatra, followed by a series of aftershocks that ran north through the Andaman and
Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal. Two tectonic or continental plates—the Asian and Indian—shifted along a
1,000km fault line by as much as 20 metres, releasing energy equivalent to more than 20,000 nuclear bombs of
the size dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
•The quake occurred just before 8 a.m. Sumatran time [1 a.m. GMT]. Eight minutes later, an alarm was triggered
at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii by seismic signals transmitted from stations in Australia. Three
minutes after that, a message was sent to other observatories in the Pacific. At 8.14 a.m., an alert notified all
countries participating in the network about the quake, indicating that it posed no threat of a tsunami to the
Pacific.
•An hour later, the centre revised its initial estimate of the siz e of the tremor from 8 to 8.5, and issued a second
alert, warning of a possible tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Frantic phone calls were made to issue warnings. But
without procedures in place for the Indian Ocean, it was hit and miss. “We started thinking about who we could
call. We talked to the State Department Operations Centre and to the military. We called embassies. We talked to
the navy in Sri Lanka, any local government official we could get hold of,” geophysicist Barry Hirshorn told the
Honolulu Advertiser. Place
•In the countries in the path of the tsunami, the response was disorganised and lethargic. The few who were
aware of the dangers were hampered by lack of preparation, bureaucratism and inadequate infrastructure. Others
either did not know how to interpret the warning signs, or were indifferent to them. None of the countries
surrounding the Bay of Bengal issued an official warning, leaving millions of people completely at the
mercy of the approaching waves.
• http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/warn-j03.shtml
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